Report Builder Developer Preview

Thomas Tobin Product Manager

Umit Yalcinalp Developer Evangelist

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Agenda where we’re going today

  Setting up reporting for an app

  What’s there today – the wizard

  Customer feedback for the wizard

  Result – Rethinking the user experience

  The concept behind the builder

  The builder in action

  Setting up for the builder

Setting up reporting can you see what I see Toto?

  You have an app with objects, fields, workflow, content, chatter, Apex, VisualForce pages

  You need to build –  Report types to cover object relationships not generated

automatically

–  Reports to demonstrate what you can get out

–  Reports as starting points for users

–  Dashboards to bring the reports together

–  Analytic snapshots to create trending data for data that changes

  And package that all up

Building reports today visiting the wizard

  1 part of a report per step

  Steps have images and explanation

  7 steps required to walk a user through the report creation process

  Field order and section correspond to default page layout

  Running a report is fast

  Simple display of fields

  Typical comment: –  “I’ve used other CRM systems, but this is the first one I can

get a list of my contacts back out”

Existing report wizard

  demonstration

Wizard Experience the man behind the curtain

  The 5 or 7 steps aren’t in a logical order

  The step order changes between the formats

  Not WSIWYG: Users don’t see results until the end

  Users often don’t know what’s in the fields in their org

  Common analytics support call to salesforce.com: –  “The results of a report weren’t what I expected”

Commonly Reported Issues

  Unnecessary cycling Filter – Run Report - Back to customize

  Users discouraged by the thought of 7 steps

  Choosing too many columns rather than too few

  Not utilizing filters et. Al., because filtering without seeing the data does not work. –  Filtering delegated to Excel

The builder concept from black and white

  Instant preview - Canvas to work on report results

  Drag and drop field placement for any layout

  Find fields like they find a dashboard

  Presented at Dreamforce’09

The builder – to color

Builder – in living Technicolor™

  demo

Builder future get on the yellow brick road

  Just like dashboards – any new features will be builder-only –  Common chart editor

  The old wizard will be EOL –  Today – profile control and shows two buttons

–  Winter’11 – profile control, one button (either builder or wizard)

–  Spring’11 – org setting – all users or none on builder

–  End of wizard in Winter’12 (end of 2011)

What you have to do your call to action

  Start using the builder now ! –  Currently, everything but matrix reports –  Feature complete in dev orgs by mid-August

–  GA in Winter’11

–  Report metadata structure is unchanged

Start here

Setting up for success - Demos

  Make sure demo data fits in 50 rows –  At least, sample of different values

  Pre-build CSFs and disable them to leave them in the tree

  Use CRTs that give you a reduced set of fields –  No need to explain why you have 200 fields for your app

Setting your Apps up to success

  CRT sections are still sections in the Report Builder

  Try to use CRTs –  And, if necessary, use custom links to existing

reports to get users to use the CRTs

–  CRT limits same as number of objects per edition

  For fields with short contents, pick short fieldnames –  Field names don’t wrap in preview

  Expect customer orgs to have both builder and wizard

Resources

  Developer.force.com

  Analytics Ideas under consideration

  Developer blog

  Analytics blog

Q&A